Miracles still happen

Three years ago, my friend and I had a startitis week at the beginning of February: We had to start a new project every day during that week. I started a cardigan. I knitted about 8 cm of it. And then, for the last three years, I've been listening to my friends joking about the cardigan. They didn't believe me when I told them I dug it up from the UFO pile and finished it. To be totally honest, I almost didn't believe it myself.

What: Aidez / Cirilia Rose

How: Circular needles 6.0 and 7.0 mm

From: Cascade Yarns Eco+, 450 g

Aidez is a popular free pattern for thick yarn. My LYS promised me, three huge skeins of Cascade Eco+ would be enough. I was a bit hesitant to believe them but I bought the yarn and cast on.

It is so silly, but my enthusiasm for knitting this project stopped right away when I had to think. Years ago, when I started the cardigan, I modified the st counts to fit me better and then completely forgot about it. Every time I was about this pick this back up, I started to second guess my modifications and left the project to wait for better days.

In no-new-projects-January, I finally decided to give up on my Aidez and was about to frog it. I took the needles off and tried it on for one last time before frogging. And what do you know, it fit me perfectly! So I guess, I had really thought about the st counts and come up with the right number after all. I quickly picked the sts right back on the needle and started working on the cardigan.

There are at least four different cable patterns that all move at a different pace. When I started this project three years ago, I made myself one enormous chart that had all the necessary charts together. Without my giant chart, getting back to this project might have seemed like too big of a task. But once I got back to it, it turned out, the charts were easily memorized and after a few rounds I didn't need my giant chart any more. Although, upon finishing the cardigan, I noticed I had worked one of the charts wrong the entire time. But who cares, it looks nice anyways

The pattern is written to knit bottom up in pieces with loads of seaming at the end. I didn't care for such folly and modified the project to be knit bottom up in one piece. I knitted the fronts and back in one piece all the way up to the armholes and left the sts waiting. Then, I magic-looped the sleeves two at a time in the round until I reached the armholes. Next, I joined the body and the sleeves and worked the raglan decreases. Since I wanted to avoid any seams, I worked the shawl collar seamlessly as well. I worked both sides to the center, joining to the back as I went and finally used kitchener stitch to join the sides. I also tried to give the collar a bit of shape with short rows just before the center back.

Once again, blocking worked wonders. Fresh off the needles the cardigan felt a little too tight for me and didn't look as nice as I had hoped. I almost wanted to throw it in the corner and leave it there. I'm glad I didn't, as the garment stretched plenty once I soaked it and actually turned out just the right size after blocking. The yarn behaved almost like alpaca even though the label says it is highland Peruvian wool.

And talking about the yarn, you can't imagine how soft it feels! It's unbelievably light and fluffy. It feels like I'm wearing a warm cloud. And in the end, I didn't use even two whole skeins! I could almost make another one with the left overs.

So the cardigan that was on time out for three years, turned out to be a really easy knit and an excellent over-sized, relaxed cardigan. I will sure be using this a lot.